A $6,500 resort vacation in Kauai – we spent $700

Travel hacking is when you use reward points (from credit cards, loyalty programs) and miles (from credit cards, flying) to redeem for free travel. It is not recommended unless you are able to treat your credit cards like debit cards so that they don’t enable you to spend beyond your means.

I’m so glad to be traveling again more extensively in 2023. Husband and I wanted a nice trip to Hawaii now that we live closer in California. We originally planned this trip to just be the two of us, but our younger child is not weaned, so he came along with us as a lap infant. Our older child was watched by the grandparents.

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Flights to Hawaii: Retail value, $340 total, $170 per person
7,500 Turkish Air Miles per person to go one way from LAX to LIH (Lihue). To get these points, we transferred points we had with the Citibank Thank You points (from an old card we don’t love, but got a sign-up for), to Turkish Air, and then via Turkish Air, booked United. We lucked out with a free middle seat in between us so DD boarded in his Doona Car Seat and was able to sleep for at least half the flight.

Flights from Hawaii: Retail value, $380 total, $190 per person
Hubby had 17,000 Delta SkyMiles (long time ago, from Delta’s credit card… we don’t fly Delta much) that he used on his flight. For my flight we bought the flight with the Capital One Venture X credit card, which has $300 travel credit a year, so it covered my flight. We flew Delta from LIH to LAX. It was a redeye and yep, neither of us really got much sleep as DD was not happy the entire way. I continued to nurse him so he didn’t cry.

Hotel: Retail value for an ocean view club room is about $4,900
Hubby has Hyatt Globalist status, which is their highest tier loyalty status. To get this, it’s a combination of spend and travel. We put most of our spending on the Hyatt Chase Credit Card, which gets you 2 night credits for every $5,000 spending. We put a lot of our tithe here, that’s our biggest expense! The cc also automatically gives you 5 credit nights to start. Then, hubby also stays in Hyatt properties as much as he can for work, and he traveled recently during a double night credit so that pushed him into Globalist status. Globalist status is highly coveted because it comes with amazing perks such as club lounge access, free parking, free breakfast, and more.

We knew we’d wanted to stay at the Grand Hyatt Kauai, considered one of the best Hyatt properties in the world. We had stayed there for one night back in 2018 on the lowest cost redemption possible and just used the pool. This time I wanted to enjoy the property more fully and asked hubby to work his travel hack magic to get us a full 3 nights, which is in our minds, a pretty big splurge for a category 7 hotel.

First night: 25,000 Hyatt points, which is the standard off-peak category 7 redemption.

Second night: 33,000 Hyatt points, which is the standard off-peak club category 7 redemption as they no longer had the lowest redemption available.

Third night: Globalist 1-7 free night award certificate, which you receive when you obtain Globalist status.

With the Globalist status we got the upgrade to ocean view. Other perks included:

Access to the Grand Club lounge – which has free breakfast, snacks in the afternoon (mostly cookies), hors d’oeuvres, and dessert
10% off Anara Spa Boutique
20% off lunch at Ilima Terrace
$25 off a minimum 2-day consecutive car rental from Avis
Complimentary access to Anara Spa
Complimentary valet parking
Waived resort fee
4PM lake checkout

We also received this lovely welcome gift of some free snacks and wine. And of course, I’m all about the beautiful lei. Everyone receives these free aluminum refillable bottles as well to refill water throughout the property, which I thought was clever, and we took those home. Little DD received an adorable stuffie modeled after one of the property’s four macaws.

Welcome gift – wine, snacks

My beautiful orchid lei

My favorite gift – a stuffed macaw named Duke

Standard issue 2 aluminum water bottles per room

We used the Grand Club lounge to have the following meals during our stay:

Day 1 dinner
Day 2 breakfast
Day 3 breakfast and dinner
Day 4 breakfast

Hors d’eouvres hours usually have a soup, salad, bread and cheese, roasted veggies, and a cooked main, in this case it was spanakopita

Breakfast is a very full and generous spread, many pastries, fruits, bagel and lox, eggs, and cooked items usually include an egg dish and a meat dish

For this part of the island I value breakfast at $15 per person, dinner at $30 per person – and this is assuming you eat very minimally at a location nearby, so this meant that we also realized $210 in free food.

Sunrise at Grand Hyatt Kauai

Rental car: Retail value $525 for 4 days
Through my husband’s company, they have corporate rates available with Hertz that you can book for personal travel, so we got a rental for $210, which we paid with credit card.

Eating out: Retail value, $410

We had two very nice meals, and the rest were mostly food truck

Nice meal 1: Tidepools restaurant at Grand Hyatt Kauai. We were really disappointed to be ghosted by the Kauai Babysitting Company, and took DD with us on date night. It felt rushed throughout and we weren’t able to really sit down and enjoy the dinner. The food I would say is 4*. We paid around $150 for two entrees and one drink.

Steak entree at Tidepools Restaurant

Date night

Nice meal 2: This was sort of a spontaneous decision. On our final day we drove around Kauai but did not make any reservations so didn’t make it to Ke’e Beach so we had time to kill. I really love the views from 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay, which used to be the St. Regis Kauai and was a very well known hotel when we were Starwoods loyalists. However, to get on property you either need to be staying there, or have a reservation for spa / restaurant. We told security we were walk ins to their bar, Welina Terrace, right as it opened,which worked. We paid $100 (which is just enough to get valet parking for free) for 3 tiny dishes. They were delicious and definitely Michelin quality, but definitely not filling, and later I grabbed a deli sandwich in Kapa’a before going on the flight.

a view worth paying for

A fresh fish dish at Welina Terrace

Otherwise, we highly enjoyed getting food (4 lunches, 1 snack) from the following excellent places:

Wailua Shave Ice
Koloa Fish Market
Craving Thai
Kauai Poke Co.
Big Monster Sushi Food truck
Pineapple Express Kauai – my favorite of the trip!
The Fish Express – hubby’s favorite for poke